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Monday, December 10, 2012

New Journal to Check Out, New Poems to Read

A sundial from the cover of Antiphon

When investigating new journals, I look for art work that catches my attention, a graphic design that doesn't skimp on form or function. Antiphon impressed me in these categories as well as in the choice of poems the editors selected.

Perhaps I shouldn't admit it, but I had no idea what antiphon meant when I found this international journal publishing out of England. Now antiphon is one of my favorite words! Traditionally, an antiphon is a chorus or response of the congregation to a piece of religious music. However, the journal, Antiphon, is not Christian based. A broader meaning of the word includes a call and response as in the case of art responding to art. I like to think of antiphon as a musical echo, a connection of one imaginative rendition speaking with another artistic piece. My poem, Abstract, responds to a painting by Irish artist Julie Aldridge. In poetry terms, it's ekphrastic: a poem responding to a piece of art.

How cool is that --- for a journal to create an international conversation (poets live in Denmark, England, Ireland, Finland, the United States) of art, of poetry in conversation? This online journal is in its second year, but I sense it will be around for a long time to come. At least, I hope so. Poetry has gone global! There are several journals that are working to let poets in the Netherlands, say, know the work of poets in Mexico or Sri Lanka.

Check out Antiphon, I hope you like it. The editors were a joy to work with; they responded quickly to my work and the publication went live within a month of my acceptance.

This poem, Abstract, came about last summer while I was in Ireland teaching an ekphrastic workshop at Anam Cara, a lovely writing retreat in County Cork. The assignment I gave my students was to choose a piece of art in the residency that she couldn't understand, a piece of art that asked more questions then it answered. Isn't that where poems come from? More questions than answers...

Susan Rich is the author
of four collections of poetry, most recently, Cloud Pharmacy and The Alchemist’s Kitchen, which was a Finalist for the Foreword
Prize and the Washington State Book Award. Her other books include Cures Include Travel (2006)
and The Cartographer’s Tongue /
Poems of the World (2000) which won the PEN USA Award for Poetry and
the Peace Corps Writers Book Award. She is the recipient of awards from
Artist’s Trust, 4Culture, The Times Literary Supplement of London, Seattle
Mayors Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, and the Fulbright Foundation. Susan's poems have been published in many journals including: Antioch Review, Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, and The Southern Review.

Currently, she is Professor of creative writing and film studies at Highline
Community College. Susan also works as the poetry editor for The Human journal based in
Istanbul, Turkey and along with Kelli Russell Agodon is founder of Poets on the Coast: A Writing Retreat for
Women.Along with Brian Turner and
Jared Hawkley, she is editor of the anthology, The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders published
by McSweeney’s and the Poetry Foundation (2013). Susan lives in Seattle,
WA and writes in the House of Sky, a few blocks from the Puget Sound.